A fairly ambitious title — particularly for an
album that went by practically unnoticed, disap­peared in a flash, and was not
followed by any new Brand X record ever since. Of course, if the intended
intention was to manifest that Brand
X's destiny is to fade away and never come back, then everything is perfectly
correct. Especially because the record kinda sucks.

Well, no, I guess it doesn't exactly «suck» as
such, but compared to XCommunication,
it does not offer even the same kind of «moderate thrill». Obviously, Goodsall
and Jones wanted, once again, to show that the old rocking horse could still
learn new tricks. So now, instead of continu­ing to work in the nice and
concise trio format of XCommunication,
they puff up the band, re­cruiting two
additional bass and keyboard players (Franz Pusch and Marc Wagnon), one more
drummer (Pierre Moerlen of Gong fame) and even a flautist (Danny Wilding) — and
proceed to reinvent their sound in this configuration.

The results are... well, it seems as if they
finally have decided to modernize their classic sound, but do it gradually, so
that, despite being recorded in 1997, much of the record sounds like it was
done in the Eighties. Now they have
some New Wave influences, some adult contemporary, some pop metal, some Prince-style
electrofunk, some Belew-style electric guitar, and the overall tone of the
album is more robotic, stiff, and harsh than it had ever been in the past. And
this is not really a good thing, because making stiff robotic records prevents
them from exploiting their biggest strengths as guitar- and bass-playing musicians.

For one thing, Goodsall's guitar here
frequently sounds atrocious — already on the first track, he goes into
overdrive and starts shredding all over the place, sending off metallic blasts
that would rather be enjoyed by fans of Joe Satriani, and occasionally invade
the particularly corny turf of Yngwie Malmsteen. Fortunately, this is not an
all-pervading problem, but he does display this new penchant for
finger-flashing in «virile metal mode» quite a few more times, and he never
really did that before. For another thing, with this heap of new players, Percy
Jones' fundamental role in the band is diminished — he still gets to have some
great bass parts, particularly on his own compositions such as ʽThe Worst Manʼ
and ʽDrum Dduʼ, but they are buried in the mix.

Finally, there is a serious lack of memorable
themes: it just seems like they are so happy to test out this new lineup of
theirs and the new groovy sound effects and playing styles that they forgot to
write meaningful tunes. The only composition here that produces the immediate
impression of «well thought out» is ʽXXLʼ, a «cool-sounding» funky dance number
that has a sharp groove, some awesome fretboard finger-running from Percy, and
even some vocals mixed deep in the background — but its «sexy» sound is hardly
what we come to expect from Brand X, nice as it is to know that they have a
fondness for James Brown and Prince.

Overall, the most memorable aspect of Manifest Destiny is its relative weirdness
— as if the band were trying to change lanes on the highway and ended up
swerving off the main road and finding itself lost in the middle of nowhere.
This is a very subjective judgement,
because, after all, we are dealing here with a fusion album from 1997, but it
does sort of objectively agree with what would happen in the future for Brand X
— nothing, that is. As of 2015, when this set of reviews is being finalized,
the band has kept quiet for eighteen years: I guess Goodsall and Jones are
still trying to come up with a good answer to the question «what should ʽunorthodox
be­haviourʼ look like in the 21st century?», and until they believe they have
found one, we're rela­tively safe from Manifest
Destiny Vol. 2.